Before the English contralto became an endangered species, Marjorie Thomas - who has died aged 85 after a long illness - was one of those who gave the voice its postwar Indian summer.

She established a considerable recorded legacy under the composer Sir Malcolm Sargent, including Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (perhaps her finest memorial), two versions of Messiah, Mendelssohn's Elijah, Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music and a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. She also performed in a famous Mahler Third Symphony with the Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík, as well as EMI's first stereo session, in 1955, for Bach's Cantata No 6 with the Bach Choir. Though hailing from the north-east, she was half-Welsh and half-Scots, and was proud to sing for the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon in 1969.

Born in Sunderland, Thomas moved at the age of two with her family to Oldham, Lancashire, where she began piano lessons with her mother. Continuing under the tutelage of William Walton's brother Noel, she won a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music. From her second term, she also learned singing with Elsie Thurston, and by the time she graduated, it was apparent that her voice would be her fortune. However, she taught music for a year at Stockport high school for girls - Joan Bakewell was one of her pupils - while pursuing singing in her spare time.

In 1945 she was heard by the conductor John Barbirolli, who booked her for Elgar's Sea Pictures with the Hallé orchestra. That December she was Konchakovna in Sir Thomas Beecham's radio production of Borodin's Prince Igor. At her audition Beecham asked for more emotion, then added: "But how could you have experienced emotion - 22 and living in Manchester?" Still, he asked her back for his Delius festival in 1946 and his Messiah recording in 1947. While rehearsing at Maida Vale studios, she met her future husband Edwin "Teddy" Gower, the sound engineer for the broadcast. They married in 1947.

Thomas first sang for Sargent in 1951, with both the Royal Choral Society and the Huddersfield Choral Society, and was among his favourite soloists from then on, often singing his orchestrated version of Brahms's Four Serious Songs. Music-lovers in the US, Europe and especially Britain will recall her chiefly as a concert singer, although she made forays into opera.

In 1950 she took the role of the Dryade in Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne and the Edinburgh festival. In 1951 she sang Nancy in Albert Herring with Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group at the Cheltenham festival and, later, Britten chose her as Hermia for the early productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Aldeburgh, the Holland festival and Covent Garden. At Covent Garden she was a Rhinemaiden and a Valkyrie in Rudolf Kempe's Ring and Magdalena in Kubelík's Meistersinger.

Though voluminous in neither voice nor person - she stood just 5ft 3ins - Thomas had an easy, unforced production that enabled her to ride orchestral climaxes in Elgar, Wagner and Strauss, while, at the other extreme, concentrating her tone for Handel or Bach. After Pope Paul VI's accession in 1963, she represented Britain in an international performance of the B minor Mass at the Vatican.

Her natural vocal method was passed on to pupils at Manchester and then at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she succeeded Astra Desmond in 1963 and became the first head of vocal studies, a position she maintained until 1990. After retirement she adjudicated at festivals and competitions.

At home Thomas loved to have her family around her and enjoyed gardening, knitting, tapestry and lace-making. Her husband died in 1982, and she is survived by her daughter and son-in-law.

· Marjorie Thomas, contralto, born June 5 1923; died September 12 2008